1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ice lift apparatus for vertically upwardly conveying or transporting ice pellets, such as ice cubes having a substantially uniform shape manufactured by an ice making machine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the automatic ice making machine known heretofore, an ice storage chamber thereof is generally provided with a front door for allowing ice cubes therein to be taken out from the chamber by opening the front door. To this end, a scoop or the like tool is generally employed. However, not a little labor is imposed on the person in taking out the ice cubes dependent on the position of the front door.
Under these circumstances, it has already been proposed to install an ice lift apparaus within the ice storage chamber so that the ice cubes can be taken out therefrom through an exit port provided in the top of the ice storage chamber. In that case, in order to transport the ice cubes to the exit port, a conveyor apparatus (as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. 26162/1972) or a bucket elevator (as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. 77742/1973) have been employed. As conventional ice lift apparatuses, which may be employed in other applications than the ice making machine, there are a screw type conveying apparatus (see Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. 130675/1981) and an ice scraping/feeding apparatus including a pair of endless conveyor members having a large number of rake means mounted thereon (see Japanese Patent Publication No. 11792/1985).
Further, such a structure as shown in FIG. 19 is known, wherein a rotatable cage 28 is pivotally mounted on each of supporting plates 27 which in turn are mounted on a pair of endless conveyor chains 3, and the cage 28 is forced to rotate or swing for discharging an ice cube accommodated therein onto an ice discharge port 20. In FIG. 19, a reference symbol 19a denotes a hook-like tip end portion which is formed integrally with an ice guide 19 and adapted to engage with a tip end portion 28a of the rotatable cage 28 to thereby cause the cage 28 to rotate or swing about a pin 27a.
However, in the prior art ice transporting apparatus in which conveyor means is employed, not only difficulty is encounted in vertically upwardly transporting the ice cubes in a satisfactory manner, but also a lot of space is required for installing the transporting apparatus. More specifically, in the case of the ice transporting apparatus in which the buckets or rake means are mounted on a pair of endless conveyor chains, the buckets which project from the endless conveyor chains require additional room, making it difficult to install the ice transporting apparatus within a relatively narrow space in the ice storage chamber of the ice making machine. Also, the amount of ice cubes capable of being transported becomes different dependent on the amount of ice being stored. Further, the position of the ice discharge port is necessarily determined by the position at which the direction of the movement of the endless conveyor chain is reversed, resulting in a further problem. On the other hand, in the case of the screw type ice transporting apparatus, ice cubes tend to be jammed between a screw shaft and a cylinder arranged around the screw shaft. This may cause the apparatus to be damaged and, needless to say, results in a problem that the shape of the ice cube is injured.
Furthermore, in the apparatus in which the rotatable cages are swingably mounted on the endless conveyor chains through the respective supporting plates, the position of the discharge port can certainly be set up arbitrarily. However, the rotatable cages protruding from the endless conveyor chains cccupy correspondingly an additional space. Also, a large number of rotatable cages have to be pivotally mounted on the supporting plates, which presents apparently a problem that the mechanical structure becomes necessarily much complicated.
Accordingly, it can be understood that there apparently exists a demand for a novel ice lift apparatus which can avoid the problems mentioned above.